That bookstore sounds incredibly weird. It seems stranger to me than a record store arranged by label. At least a number of smaller record labels are known for a particular style, or for certain big artists who have always stuck with them. If I had to name the publishing houses on any of the books I own, I'd be screwed.
I guess if I was more into niche books, though, there might be the equivalent of "indie labels" with specific styles or authors they are known for. That would make more sense, like some of the comic book stores in town that are arranged by publisher.
What problem do you have with articles in German? They seem to work pretty naturally to me. I am not fluent but I can sonstruct sentences with articles in the right places no problem.
B-Wo said particles not articles. Particles, I am told, exist in Japanese, but I don't know any Japanese. They are also essential to understanding ancient Greek. I didn't realize that they existed in German. Please explain.
Part 3 is incredibly long. I watched all of them at the Guggenheim some years back, and my legs were all cramped up by the end of 3. The cramping may have been due in part to tension, from the part where they break his teeth. If you have a dental phobia, this is not the one to see.
Oh, have you been reading the paper while you're there? Generally they tend to be written at an ideal level for people who are pretty decent at a language, but hardly fluent. Straightforward sentence structure and middle-school or high-school level vocabulary make for good learning. Plus, you've got the chance to read Der Spiegel, which makes me envious.
Forgive me if you're actually at a much higher reading level, and just trying to attempt the German equivalent of James Joyce or William Burroughs.
I'm absolutely certain that I asked for this same advice (re Cremaster sequence and Matthew Barney generally, I think) in comments once. You should just find that.
I find myself reading the dictionary every now and then because I actually can read it, unlike, I expect, one of the books I just got (one of several collections of Gottfried Benn's prose, purchased in a bookstore in which all the books were arranged by publisher, making it rather hard to find books by a particular author—interestingly, to me, I have also while here been in a record store in which everything was arranged by label), of which in the conversation in which it was recommended to me I asked whether it was being recommended because it was good, or because I would be able to read it, the reply being "oh, you won't stand a chance.", and also mostly unlike Die Klavierspielerin, of whose paragraphs I can generally grasp the main ideas being presented, though the meaning of many of the words escapes me—or rather, was never present.
I was half way through this sentence when the parole board showed leniency.
Bookstores in Italy (and, if I remember right, German Switzerland) are also generally organized by publisher. It took me a while to get used to the fact that to find something, you should first ask the staff. I remember reading an editorial in Italy arguing a proposal to organize bookstores by author (within broad sections), on the grounds that the customer would no longer be forced to browse the publisher's carefully chosen series.
Joseph Roth's German is pretty straightforward. I'd recommend Die Legende vom Heiligen Trinker as a starting point. (Radetzkymarsch is great, but much longer.)
I've always recommended Demian to people looking for an introductory German reading because I found it pretty easy to read and enjoyable. Mr. Wolfson is however older than I was when I read it and so might not find it worthwhile.
Yeah, Japan also typically arranges by publisher. On the other hand, there's a wealth of small, cheap paperbacks.
As someone who has learned both Japanese and German, I can say that Japanese particles are more like detached declension endings or prepositions than German particles. I think "particle" is sometimes shorthand for "weird little word we don't have a term for."
Assuming you are talking about words like "doch": I've always found those words kind of cool and enjoy it when I can formulate a sentence that includes one of them and sounds right. We have similar words in colloquial English -- consider "y'know" -- but they are not considered a proper part of the language, at least by prescriptive grammarians. (Descriptivists maybe do consider them a part of the language and if so, good for them.)
In Ancient Greek particles were used to express shades of meaning, some of which we English speakers would express by changing teh tone of our voice. In a more sing-songy language with pitches that doesn't work.
The particle ge (gamma, epsilon) is often crudely translated as "at any rate." A good translation translates a ubiquitous word like ge differently depending on the context. Sometimes the meaning is too subtle for English, so you just leave it out. I had a professor (German by the way) who said that ge was the equivalent of raising a single eyebrow.
There is, in fact, a famous, musty book by Denniston devodted to the Greek particle. It was out of print for a while, but I think that some publisher (maybe something connected to Bryn Mawr?) came out with a reprint.
I couldn't make heads or tails of Cremaster 5, and I wouldn't recommend it. I liked 2 very much (the one with the Slayer solo and the two-stepping). Probably 3 is your best bet if you only intend to see one of the movies: it's very long but the story is broken into diverse parts, and the sculpture throughout is his best.
What about Sebald? In translation his prose comes across as not being impenetrable in its original tongue.
I didn't get to the Slayer solo or two-stepping in 2; wandered out just after the murder of the gas-station attendant, when I realized how long it was going to be. Couldn't piece together a story of any kind. And I'm still waiting for the official Donkey Kong mashup.
I love Sebald, in English, but when I obtained Austerlitz I read it for about an hour, put it down, picked it up the next day, read some more, reached the end of a paragraph, and realized that that had not happened the day before. That might not be the experience one seeks in a foreign language.
Also, I thought German particles were those things like 'vor' and 'ein' that detach themselves from their roots and wander around through the sentence; much the way Minivet describes Japanese particles in 18.
There is a bookstore in san francisco that had its books arranged by color as part of an art project. It was supposed to be temporary, but the last time I went there, it was still set up that way. It looks really cool but makes the bookstore pretty unusable.
(Er, uh, "those are not particles" is based on my not knowing quite what particles are but thinking it would not mean "detachable prepositiony portion of a two-part verb".)
My strongly held opinion about Cremaster is that viewers ought to familiarize themselves with the sculptures associated with the film, if at all possible, before viewing the film. Originally they were shown alongside the sculptures, and that makes a world of difference, since so many aspects of the films (which are not narrative driven anyway, with the exception of 3 and maaaybe 2) are tied to the sculptures. I think the official web site has at least images of the sculpture.
32, 33: OK, everyone read this and get back to me. And this. Stupid linguists don't seem to be able to agree on the meaning of 'particle'; they should take some lessons from philosophers.
I thought doch that particles referred to things that stood independent in sentences but that things that looked like particles but were connected with verbs in the infinitive were referred to as parts of "separable prefix verbs." It's possible that technically "ein" by itself and "ein" as part of "einladen" are both particles in some general sense to linguists; to language students it's probably easier to say one is a prefix and the other a particle in order to prevent confusion when the important thing is to learn the language, not how to talk about it at a high level of precision.
Almost every sentence in this comment could be wrong.
Actually, some people seem to use 'particle' the way Jackmo and I were using it, some people seem to use it the way you and I think bg and maybe Minivet were using it. And I have no intention of reading those links, either. So it's all good.
35--From a similar google search, I came up with this linguistics paper: I think the answer is that Clown is right within a more prescriptivist grammar, and you and I are right within a more function-based grammar. The separable prefix verbs are also called particle or modal particle verbs.
"Particle" is a fairly generic term in my experience, meaning short words that aren't exactly adverbs. I think that they usually modify the whole sentence or else the verb. In Chinese there are aspect particles which are not like any of the German particles we've discussed.
Whether the separable parts of separable verbs (e.g. "vor") are particles or not is pretty nominalistic, but in any case they would always be distinguished from the "doch" type particles.
What about Sebald? In translation his prose comes across as not being impenetrable in its original tongue.
This is a joke, right? I actually did translate about ten or so pages of Die Ringe des Saturns last summer. That means I translated about 12 sentences and about 100 complicated participial phrases.
Complicated participial phrases are also what distinguish my long sentence (the like of which, as Weiner guesses, I was perfectly capable of producing before I knew a lick of German) from what would be going on in a long German sentence. Where I have relative clauses ("the book of which in the conversation in which ...") Sebaldesque German would have participial phrases: "unlike the in a conversation in which I learned I stood no chance of reading it recommended to me book"...
Since I'm tired of particles, don't want to discuss infidelty, never gave a good goddamn about sock-puppetry or Lance Bass---
Thanks for the suggestion to look at the Chowhound board, Clown. We ended up at a soul-food place (recommended by the users, seconded by about everyone I know) on 110th called Spoonbread--because if you're going to depart from California Cuisine, you might as well go all the way. It was very good, although I can't believe that they expected anyone to be able to eat all that.
52 -- Glad to hear it, JM. (Since reading Labs' latest post I have a weird compulsion to address you as JoMo.) Yep, I remember reading that Spoonbread is good.
Ummm lots of them? It's more the fact that there are lots of them, there's no easy way to remember what they mean (they don't decompose into parts as so many other words in German do, nor do they have straightforward English analogues), and they frequently have multiple subtly (or not so subtly) different uses. The entry for "eben" in my dictionary is pretty long, with six parts, and each of them begins "verwendet, um auszudrucken, dass..." and then there's not really a definition but a description of how to use it followed by some examples. And you basically just have to memorize them. But they seem to be fairly necessary to varying tone, conveying irony, eg, etc. And sometimes it's just not clear what they mean. So, wtf.
They're playing in August at Arsenal, in Potsdamer Platz, which is really showing a lot of fantastic movies in August, including Solaris and Johnny Guitar.
As far as particles in German go, my perhaps unrepresentative experience with them is/was that I could only really pick them up speaking with Germans and getting their feel. Obviously unhelpful for when you're miles away trying to translate something, but they are/were the last thing to fall into place for me. Duden #9 has sections on each though, I think, for what that's worth, though I haven't been paying attention, so perhaps it's already been suggested.
Hey speaking of "Modern Love" I reckon they are totally ready for an article on blogmarriage and blogadultery. washer and Tia Maria-dreyer can collaborate.
In Ancient Greek particles were used to express shades of meaning, some of which we English speakers would express by changing teh tone of our voice.
I knew a guy from Texas, who had learned Ancient Greek in Texas, who maintained that the proper way to translate some particle or mood or tense or whatever was with "fixin'", as in, "I'm fixin' to go to the store.".
My English/German dictionary happens to contain, under the English "way", the translation for "We have ways of making you talk."
The New England Mobile Book Fair (neither mobile nor a book fair, discuss) arranges many -- but not all! of its paperbacks by publisher. (It also has sections that are by subject, and a pretty good remainders section.) It's in Newton, MA, and is a ton of browsing fun.
Ooh, the Langenscheidts Deutsch als Fremdsprache. Good choice. The Duden Bildwörterbuch is also hours of language fun.
Even discounting the extended adjectival clauses, I wouldn't recommend Sebald to a German learner because things are much harder to read with no driving plot.
70: I disagree with your definition for doch. That's a funny one, though, because it is sometimes just for emphasis and sometimes has a very specific meaning. (Contradiction of the assertion of a negative - basically, 'yuh-huh' or 'it is SO'.)
(By the way, besides being a fluent german speaker, I am also a gal.)
But are you a gal who is currently in Berlin or will in a month or so be in the greater San Francisco Bay Area? This is, after all, the important intelligence.
i think all your problems will be solved by stopping reading gottfried benn. jesus, maria, und ein stueckerl josef.
you could try heinrich boell. that is not so hard. or Russendisko, which is really funny and conversational and set in berlin. it was written by vladimir m.-- i have forgotten his name but any bookstore clerk will know the book.
hallo blume. ich kenne dich wohl, oder?
(was machen wir beide hier!)
I only started reading the Benn this morning, so far it's actually not any harder than the Jelinek (weird perspective shifts and largely unfamiliar vocabulary!), and the advantage of what I'm reading (Gehirne stories) is that they're short enough to be read multiple times. And so far the vocabulary isn't notably harder, nor is the grammar all whacked out in Sebaldesque or other wise.
"Doch" is very weird. It is used to contradict a negative question or assertion. (French uses 'si' for this, I think.) We don't really have a word for it in English.
When they're floating around in sentences (eben, ja, doch, genau), they are for emphasis. But emphasis doesn't always translate into making the sentence more forceful; they can be used to back off of an otherwise forceful declarative statement.
We have ways of doing that in English. We really do have ways of doing that in English. We kind of have ways of doing that in English. We sort of have ways of doing that, even in English. We have ways of doing that in English, y'know. We even have ways of doing that in English. We have ways of doing just that in English.
You don't translate the words directly; but it's hard to say even what sense should be given to the particle absent context. I used to just skip those words when translating and throw them in later once I had a better sense of the dialogue.
I'm not after anything in particular, but I had received a recommendation—from someone whose opinions I respect—as to the quality of Benn's writing and this cycle in particular. Actually he (recommender) said that one of Benn's novels was one of the best he'd ever read. I also like this bit from the beginning of "Gehirne": "Ich will mir ein Buch kaufen und einen Stift; ich will mir jetzt möglichst vieles aufschrieben, damit nicht alles so herunterfließt. So viele Jahre lebte ich, und alles ist versunken."—in fact that last sentence was under consideration for appropriation to serve as a post title.
91: oh, benn is very canonical, there is nothing wrong with liking or reading him. like i said, mine is a visceral subjective reaction, not a universal one. viel Spass noch.
Kaminer rocks. And his books are short and he writes the kind of sentences that non-native speakers get along with. I mean Rilke's Die Aufzeichnungen des Malte Laurids Brigge is amazing style but daunting reading for those of us who didn't get any umlauts at birth.
Sorry to be missing you in Berlin, BW, give me a holla if you're in Munich.
I took two years of German in college but all this grammar talk is totally over my head. But about the Cremaster films, I loved part 3, the one that was set in the Chrysler building (even though it was butt-numbingly long) especially for the destruction-derby-to-the-death scene set in the lobby. The battle of the bands in the Guggenheim with Agnostic Front and Murphy's Law was absolutely breathtakingly mind-bogglingly weird-slash-sexy. And another one (part 2?) had lots of cowboy imagery that was so beautiful and pushed my homorerotic buttons so hard that it made me cry.
I took two years of German in college but all this grammar talk is totally over my head. But about the Cremaster films, I loved part 3, the one that was set in the Chrysler building (even though it was butt-numbingly long) especially for the destruction-derby-to-the-death scene set in the lobby. The battle of the bands in the Guggenheim with Agnostic Front and Murphy's Law was absolutely breathtakingly mind-bogglingly weird-slash-sexy. And another one (part 2?) had lots of cowboy imagery that was so beautiful and pushed my homorerotic buttons so hard that it made me cry.
That bookstore sounds incredibly weird. It seems stranger to me than a record store arranged by label. At least a number of smaller record labels are known for a particular style, or for certain big artists who have always stuck with them. If I had to name the publishing houses on any of the books I own, I'd be screwed.
I guess if I was more into niche books, though, there might be the equivalent of "indie labels" with specific styles or authors they are known for. That would make more sense, like some of the comic book stores in town that are arranged by publisher.
Posted by JAC | Link to this comment | 07-27-06 10:43 AM
What problem do you have with articles in German? They seem to work pretty naturally to me. I am not fluent but I can sonstruct sentences with articles in the right places no problem.
Posted by Clownæsthesiologist | Link to this comment | 07-27-06 10:46 AM
Not articles. Particles.
Posted by ben wolfson | Link to this comment | 07-27-06 10:50 AM
The arrangement in the bookstore, while confusing, does make for very pretty shelves.
Posted by Clownæsthesiologist | Link to this comment | 07-27-06 10:51 AM
B-Wo said particles not articles. Particles, I am told, exist in Japanese, but I don't know any Japanese. They are also essential to understanding ancient Greek. I didn't realize that they existed in German. Please explain.
Posted by Bostoniangirl | Link to this comment | 07-27-06 10:53 AM
Of all the people on whom German syntax should not have been let loose...
Posted by Jackmormon | Link to this comment | 07-27-06 10:53 AM
3 -- oh. You mean words like "doch"?
Posted by Clownæsthesiologist | Link to this comment | 07-27-06 10:53 AM
Part 3 is incredibly long. I watched all of them at the Guggenheim some years back, and my legs were all cramped up by the end of 3. The cramping may have been due in part to tension, from the part where they break his teeth. If you have a dental phobia, this is not the one to see.
Posted by jms | Link to this comment | 07-27-06 10:54 AM
Oh, have you been reading the paper while you're there? Generally they tend to be written at an ideal level for people who are pretty decent at a language, but hardly fluent. Straightforward sentence structure and middle-school or high-school level vocabulary make for good learning. Plus, you've got the chance to read Der Spiegel, which makes me envious.
Forgive me if you're actually at a much higher reading level, and just trying to attempt the German equivalent of James Joyce or William Burroughs.
Posted by JAC | Link to this comment | 07-27-06 10:55 AM
JL and Armsmasher, this is your chance to give back to the community that's given you so much.
Unfortunately, I don't watch movies, so I'm no help. If I were to watch one, it wouldn't be by Matthew Barney.
particles, wtf, german?
An excellent question.
Posted by JL | Link to this comment | 07-27-06 10:56 AM
I'm absolutely certain that I asked for this same advice (re Cremaster sequence and Matthew Barney generally, I think) in comments once. You should just find that.
Posted by washerdreyer | Link to this comment | 07-27-06 10:56 AM
I find myself reading the dictionary every now and then because I actually can read it, unlike, I expect, one of the books I just got (one of several collections of Gottfried Benn's prose, purchased in a bookstore in which all the books were arranged by publisher, making it rather hard to find books by a particular author—interestingly, to me, I have also while here been in a record store in which everything was arranged by label), of which in the conversation in which it was recommended to me I asked whether it was being recommended because it was good, or because I would be able to read it, the reply being "oh, you won't stand a chance.", and also mostly unlike Die Klavierspielerin, of whose paragraphs I can generally grasp the main ideas being presented, though the meaning of many of the words escapes me—or rather, was never present.
I was half way through this sentence when the parole board showed leniency.
Posted by dsquared | Link to this comment | 07-27-06 10:58 AM
Particles, I am told, exist in Japanese,
This is true, but depending on how you look at them, they sometimes look like waves. Divine ones, at that.
Posted by My Alter Ego | Link to this comment | 07-27-06 11:11 AM
Bookstores in Italy (and, if I remember right, German Switzerland) are also generally organized by publisher. It took me a while to get used to the fact that to find something, you should first ask the staff. I remember reading an editorial in Italy arguing a proposal to organize bookstores by author (within broad sections), on the grounds that the customer would no longer be forced to browse the publisher's carefully chosen series.
Joseph Roth's German is pretty straightforward. I'd recommend Die Legende vom Heiligen Trinker as a starting point. (Radetzkymarsch is great, but much longer.)
Posted by Vance Maverick | Link to this comment | 07-27-06 11:12 AM
14: "arguing" s/b "arguing against"
Posted by Vance Maverick | Link to this comment | 07-27-06 11:13 AM
I've always recommended Demian to people looking for an introductory German reading because I found it pretty easy to read and enjoyable. Mr. Wolfson is however older than I was when I read it and so might not find it worthwhile.
Posted by Clownæsthesiologist | Link to this comment | 07-27-06 11:15 AM
(Also some other Hesse stuff is pretty straightforwardly written, e.g. Narziss und Goldmund. Stay far far away from Glasperlenspiel however.)
Posted by Clownæsthesiologist | Link to this comment | 07-27-06 11:16 AM
Yeah, Japan also typically arranges by publisher. On the other hand, there's a wealth of small, cheap paperbacks.
As someone who has learned both Japanese and German, I can say that Japanese particles are more like detached declension endings or prepositions than German particles. I think "particle" is sometimes shorthand for "weird little word we don't have a term for."
Posted by Minivet | Link to this comment | 07-27-06 11:19 AM
And you don't tell us the name of this dictionary, after the 152 word sentence?
For shame.
Posted by FTB | Link to this comment | 07-27-06 11:39 AM
I feel capable of saying on my own recognizance that the answer isn't part one
By "part one" do you mean "Part One," or "the first part, which happens to be called Part Four"?
Posted by strasmangelo jones | Link to this comment | 07-27-06 11:43 AM
Assuming you are talking about words like "doch": I've always found those words kind of cool and enjoy it when I can formulate a sentence that includes one of them and sounds right. We have similar words in colloquial English -- consider "y'know" -- but they are not considered a proper part of the language, at least by prescriptive grammarians. (Descriptivists maybe do consider them a part of the language and if so, good for them.)
Posted by Clownæsthesiologist | Link to this comment | 07-27-06 11:46 AM
In Ancient Greek particles were used to express shades of meaning, some of which we English speakers would express by changing teh tone of our voice. In a more sing-songy language with pitches that doesn't work.
The particle ge (gamma, epsilon) is often crudely translated as "at any rate." A good translation translates a ubiquitous word like ge differently depending on the context. Sometimes the meaning is too subtle for English, so you just leave it out. I had a professor (German by the way) who said that ge was the equivalent of raising a single eyebrow.
There is, in fact, a famous, musty book by Denniston devodted to the Greek particle. It was out of print for a while, but I think that some publisher (maybe something connected to Bryn Mawr?) came out with a reprint.
Posted by Bostoniangirl | Link to this comment | 07-27-06 11:47 AM
Wolfson was obviously doing a Mark-Twain-like parody of German sentence construction.
Posted by John Emerson | Link to this comment | 07-27-06 11:48 AM
On the Cremaster stuff, someone should page 'Smasher. Hasn't he got strong opinions in this regard?
Posted by LizardBreath | Link to this comment | 07-27-06 11:51 AM
I couldn't make heads or tails of Cremaster 5, and I wouldn't recommend it. I liked 2 very much (the one with the Slayer solo and the two-stepping). Probably 3 is your best bet if you only intend to see one of the movies: it's very long but the story is broken into diverse parts, and the sculpture throughout is his best.
What about Sebald? In translation his prose comes across as not being impenetrable in its original tongue.
Posted by Armsmasher | Link to this comment | 07-27-06 11:52 AM
23: And I am obviously not fluent enough in German to get the parody. Thus, my request for the dictionary's name. Pretty please?
Posted by FTB | Link to this comment | 07-27-06 11:57 AM
25: Story?
I didn't get to the Slayer solo or two-stepping in 2; wandered out just after the murder of the gas-station attendant, when I realized how long it was going to be. Couldn't piece together a story of any kind. And I'm still waiting for the official Donkey Kong mashup.
I love Sebald, in English, but when I obtained Austerlitz I read it for about an hour, put it down, picked it up the next day, read some more, reached the end of a paragraph, and realized that that had not happened the day before. That might not be the experience one seeks in a foreign language.
Also, I thought German particles were those things like 'vor' and 'ein' that detach themselves from their roots and wander around through the sentence; much the way Minivet describes Japanese particles in 18.
Posted by Matt Weiner | Link to this comment | 07-27-06 12:04 PM
I also think Wolfson capable of attaining that sort of sentence structure all on his own, without any help from German.
Posted by Matt Weiner | Link to this comment | 07-27-06 12:06 PM
There is a bookstore in san francisco that had its books arranged by color as part of an art project. It was supposed to be temporary, but the last time I went there, it was still set up that way. It looks really cool but makes the bookstore pretty unusable.
Posted by joe o | Link to this comment | 07-27-06 12:06 PM
Also, I thought German particles were those things like 'vor' and 'ein' that detach themselves from their roots and wander around through the sentence
That's right, except that there are very strict rules--of course--for where they're supposed to end up.
Posted by Jackmormon | Link to this comment | 07-27-06 12:08 PM
Those are not particles -- they are parts of verbs. They usually function kind of like prepositions except for their placement.
Posted by Clownæsthesiologist | Link to this comment | 07-27-06 12:14 PM
Okay, now I'm going to look it up. (Damn you, Clown!)
Posted by Jackmormon | Link to this comment | 07-27-06 12:15 PM
(Er, uh, "those are not particles" is based on my not knowing quite what particles are but thinking it would not mean "detachable prepositiony portion of a two-part verb".)
Posted by Clownæsthesiologist | Link to this comment | 07-27-06 12:15 PM
27: Beyond this?
My strongly held opinion about Cremaster is that viewers ought to familiarize themselves with the sculptures associated with the film, if at all possible, before viewing the film. Originally they were shown alongside the sculptures, and that makes a world of difference, since so many aspects of the films (which are not narrative driven anyway, with the exception of 3 and maaaybe 2) are tied to the sculptures. I think the official web site has at least images of the sculpture.
Posted by Armsmasher | Link to this comment | 07-27-06 12:18 PM
32, 33: OK, everyone read this and get back to me. And this. Stupid linguists don't seem to be able to agree on the meaning of 'particle'; they should take some lessons from philosophers.
Posted by Matt Weiner | Link to this comment | 07-27-06 12:20 PM
27: Beyond this?
I want a playable form. At least it should settle that "Are video games art?" debate.
Posted by Matt Weiner | Link to this comment | 07-27-06 12:23 PM
35 -- Oh. Teach me to talk out my ass.
Posted by Clownæsthesiologist | Link to this comment | 07-27-06 12:24 PM
I thought doch that particles referred to things that stood independent in sentences but that things that looked like particles but were connected with verbs in the infinitive were referred to as parts of "separable prefix verbs." It's possible that technically "ein" by itself and "ein" as part of "einladen" are both particles in some general sense to linguists; to language students it's probably easier to say one is a prefix and the other a particle in order to prevent confusion when the important thing is to learn the language, not how to talk about it at a high level of precision.
Almost every sentence in this comment could be wrong.
Posted by eb | Link to this comment | 07-27-06 12:27 PM
"out my ass" == "based on the first sentence of the Wikipædia article on particles" which is all the research I did for my comments on this thread.
Posted by Clownæsthesiologist | Link to this comment | 07-27-06 12:27 PM
Actually, some people seem to use 'particle' the way Jackmo and I were using it, some people seem to use it the way you and I think bg and maybe Minivet were using it. And I have no intention of reading those links, either. So it's all good.
Posted by Matt Weiner | Link to this comment | 07-27-06 12:27 PM
you and eb and I think bg and maybe Minivet
Posted by Matt Weiner | Link to this comment | 07-27-06 12:28 PM
Weiner, it's risky rely so heavily on Jackendoff.
Posted by John Emerson | Link to this comment | 07-27-06 12:29 PM
35--From a similar google search, I came up with this linguistics paper: I think the answer is that Clown is right within a more prescriptivist grammar, and you and I are right within a more function-based grammar. The separable prefix verbs are also called particle or modal particle verbs.
Posted by Jackmormon | Link to this comment | 07-27-06 12:30 PM
modal particle verbs
That's kind of weird since "modal verbs" is a completely unrelated grammatical phenomenon.
Posted by Clownæsthesiologist | Link to this comment | 07-27-06 12:33 PM
I say 38 because ?? Russian has particles but no separable prefix verbs (unless they never told me - that wasn't part of the deal!).
Posted by eb | Link to this comment | 07-27-06 12:34 PM
"Particle" is a fairly generic term in my experience, meaning short words that aren't exactly adverbs. I think that they usually modify the whole sentence or else the verb. In Chinese there are aspect particles which are not like any of the German particles we've discussed.
Whether the separable parts of separable verbs (e.g. "vor") are particles or not is pretty nominalistic, but in any case they would always be distinguished from the "doch" type particles.
Posted by John Emerson | Link to this comment | 07-27-06 12:39 PM
Wait, no! Clown, I got that wrong; it should be "directional participle verbs."
Posted by Jackmormon | Link to this comment | 07-27-06 12:40 PM
What about Sebald? In translation his prose comes across as not being impenetrable in its original tongue.
This is a joke, right? I actually did translate about ten or so pages of Die Ringe des Saturns last summer. That means I translated about 12 sentences and about 100 complicated participial phrases.
Complicated participial phrases are also what distinguish my long sentence (the like of which, as Weiner guesses, I was perfectly capable of producing before I knew a lick of German) from what would be going on in a long German sentence. Where I have relative clauses ("the book of which in the conversation in which ...") Sebaldesque German would have participial phrases: "unlike the in a conversation in which I learned I stood no chance of reading it recommended to me book"...
Posted by ben wolfson | Link to this comment | 07-27-06 1:20 PM
I always thought that a particle was the "tf" in "wtf, german?"
Posted by Mo MacArbie | Link to this comment | 07-27-06 1:20 PM
49: Nice.
Posted by Clownæsthesiologist | Link to this comment | 07-27-06 1:26 PM
And you don't tell us the name of this dictionary, after the 152 word sentence?
Something like "Langenscheidt Größwörterbuch Deutsch als Fremdsprache".
Posted by ben wolfson | Link to this comment | 07-27-06 1:54 PM
Since I'm tired of particles, don't want to discuss infidelty, never gave a good goddamn about sock-puppetry or Lance Bass---
Thanks for the suggestion to look at the Chowhound board, Clown. We ended up at a soul-food place (recommended by the users, seconded by about everyone I know) on 110th called Spoonbread--because if you're going to depart from California Cuisine, you might as well go all the way. It was very good, although I can't believe that they expected anyone to be able to eat all that.
Posted by Jackmormon | Link to this comment | 07-27-06 1:59 PM
So which kind of German participles are wtf?
Posted by Matt Weiner | Link to this comment | 07-27-06 2:06 PM
Particles, not participles. Damn. Also, question addressed to Wolfson.
Posted by Matt Weiner | Link to this comment | 07-27-06 2:06 PM
52 -- Glad to hear it, JM. (Since reading Labs' latest post I have a weird compulsion to address you as JoMo.) Yep, I remember reading that Spoonbread is good.
53 -- the subjunctive kind?
Posted by Clownæsthesiologist | Link to this comment | 07-27-06 2:11 PM
When you say "here," you mean Berlin, yes? Where is it playing? It's not listed on Barney's screenings page, nor in Zitty online.
Not that I'm, like, stalking you, I just haven't seen 5 yet.
Posted by arthurcravan | Link to this comment | 07-27-06 2:12 PM
Ummm lots of them? It's more the fact that there are lots of them, there's no easy way to remember what they mean (they don't decompose into parts as so many other words in German do, nor do they have straightforward English analogues), and they frequently have multiple subtly (or not so subtly) different uses. The entry for "eben" in my dictionary is pretty long, with six parts, and each of them begins "verwendet, um auszudrucken, dass..." and then there's not really a definition but a description of how to use it followed by some examples. And you basically just have to memorize them. But they seem to be fairly necessary to varying tone, conveying irony, eg, etc. And sometimes it's just not clear what they mean. So, wtf.
Posted by ben wolfson | Link to this comment | 07-27-06 2:14 PM
They're playing in August at Arsenal, in Potsdamer Platz, which is really showing a lot of fantastic movies in August, including Solaris and Johnny Guitar.
Posted by ben wolfson | Link to this comment | 07-27-06 2:15 PM
Arsenal calendar.
Posted by ben wolfson | Link to this comment | 07-27-06 2:16 PM
52: But JM, you left out the chance to discuss CoHE first person articles!
Posted by eb | Link to this comment | 07-27-06 2:18 PM
Oh, which kind. The free-floating quasi-adverb kind, like "doch" and "eben". Separable-prefix verbs are no wtf.
Posted by ben wolfson | Link to this comment | 07-27-06 2:20 PM
Weiner, it's risky rely so heavily on Jackendoff.
You could go blind.
Posted by Armsmasher | Link to this comment | 07-27-06 2:21 PM
Oof, just after I leave. Schade.
As far as particles in German go, my perhaps unrepresentative experience with them is/was that I could only really pick them up speaking with Germans and getting their feel. Obviously unhelpful for when you're miles away trying to translate something, but they are/were the last thing to fall into place for me. Duden #9 has sections on each though, I think, for what that's worth, though I haven't been paying attention, so perhaps it's already been suggested.
Posted by arthurcravan | Link to this comment | 07-27-06 2:25 PM
CoHE first person articles? I'd rather go blind.
Posted by Jackmormon | Link to this comment | 07-27-06 2:26 PM
That would make a good article.
Posted by eb | Link to this comment | 07-27-06 2:28 PM
And if the article involved a passionate longing for adultery with a sockpuppet, we could submit it to "Modern Love"!
Posted by Jackmormon | Link to this comment | 07-27-06 2:30 PM
Maybe untranslatable particles are the reason for the famous German lack of a sense of humor. We just don't get the layers of modulation.
Posted by Mo MacArbie | Link to this comment | 07-27-06 2:33 PM
Hey speaking of "Modern Love" I reckon they are totally ready for an article on blogmarriage and blogadultery. washer and Tia Maria-dreyer can collaborate.
Posted by Clownæsthesiologist | Link to this comment | 07-27-06 2:35 PM
In Ancient Greek particles were used to express shades of meaning, some of which we English speakers would express by changing teh tone of our voice.
I knew a guy from Texas, who had learned Ancient Greek in Texas, who maintained that the proper way to translate some particle or mood or tense or whatever was with "fixin'", as in, "I'm fixin' to go to the store.".
Posted by ben wolfson | Link to this comment | 07-27-06 2:35 PM
I think "doch" translates roughly to "dadgum."
Hmm, all the presumptive gals must be over in the infidelity thread. Don't the ladies dig particles? I'll never get blarried at this rate.
Posted by Mo MacArbie | Link to this comment | 07-27-06 3:08 PM
The second link in 35 contains a pretty good summary of what particles are in a linguistic sense.
Posted by teofilo | Link to this comment | 07-27-06 3:38 PM
My English/German dictionary happens to contain, under the English "way", the translation for "We have ways of making you talk."
The New England Mobile Book Fair (neither mobile nor a book fair, discuss) arranges many -- but not all! of its paperbacks by publisher. (It also has sections that are by subject, and a pretty good remainders section.) It's in Newton, MA, and is a ton of browsing fun.
Posted by DonBoy | Link to this comment | 07-27-06 6:53 PM
But "We have ways of making you talk" is German already! -- or so I thought -- I mean the 'w's are pronounced /v/ and the 'v' /f/, right?
Posted by Clownæsthesiologist | Link to this comment | 07-27-06 7:22 PM
Ooh, the Langenscheidts Deutsch als Fremdsprache. Good choice. The Duden Bildwörterbuch is also hours of language fun.
Even discounting the extended adjectival clauses, I wouldn't recommend Sebald to a German learner because things are much harder to read with no driving plot.
70: I disagree with your definition for doch. That's a funny one, though, because it is sometimes just for emphasis and sometimes has a very specific meaning. (Contradiction of the assertion of a negative - basically, 'yuh-huh' or 'it is SO'.)
(By the way, besides being a fluent german speaker, I am also a gal.)
Posted by Blume | Link to this comment | 07-28-06 4:16 AM
But are you a gal who is currently in Berlin or will in a month or so be in the greater San Francisco Bay Area? This is, after all, the important intelligence.
Posted by ben wolfson | Link to this comment | 07-28-06 4:19 AM
Berlin!
Posted by Blume | Link to this comment | 07-28-06 4:28 AM
Hey! Me too, modulo the "gal" part!
Posted by ben wolfson | Link to this comment | 07-28-06 4:34 AM
Crazy! Two english speakers in Berlin! We must be the only ones.
Posted by Blume | Link to this comment | 07-28-06 4:38 AM
I feel myself to be ever so gently mocked.
Posted by ben wolfson | Link to this comment | 07-28-06 4:38 AM
Et excrucior!
Posted by ben wolfson | Link to this comment | 07-28-06 4:40 AM
I'm not mocking you.
[This is the setup for you to respond with the above discussed particle.]
Posted by Blume | Link to this comment | 07-28-06 4:46 AM
Doch!
[Thanks for the tip.]
And now my time's run out! whee.
Posted by ben wolfson | Link to this comment | 07-28-06 4:51 AM
i think all your problems will be solved by stopping reading gottfried benn. jesus, maria, und ein stueckerl josef.
you could try heinrich boell. that is not so hard. or Russendisko, which is really funny and conversational and set in berlin. it was written by vladimir m.-- i have forgotten his name but any bookstore clerk will know the book.
hallo blume. ich kenne dich wohl, oder?
(was machen wir beide hier!)
Posted by mmf! | Link to this comment | 07-28-06 7:53 AM
on second thought, ignore me - enjoy pseudonymity.
(it's just, i would recognize that enthusiasm for the Duden Bildwörterbuch anywhere!!)
Posted by mmf! | Link to this comment | 07-28-06 8:02 AM
I only started reading the Benn this morning, so far it's actually not any harder than the Jelinek (weird perspective shifts and largely unfamiliar vocabulary!), and the advantage of what I'm reading (Gehirne stories) is that they're short enough to be read multiple times. And so far the vocabulary isn't notably harder, nor is the grammar all whacked out in Sebaldesque or other wise.
Posted by ben wolfson | Link to this comment | 07-28-06 8:05 AM
I was seduced into Benn by being told that the main character of the Gehirne cycle has to stop himself from asking his patients "was macht Ihr Leib?".
Posted by ben wolfson | Link to this comment | 07-28-06 8:07 AM
"Doch" is very weird. It is used to contradict a negative question or assertion. (French uses 'si' for this, I think.) We don't really have a word for it in English.
When they're floating around in sentences (eben, ja, doch, genau), they are for emphasis. But emphasis doesn't always translate into making the sentence more forceful; they can be used to back off of an otherwise forceful declarative statement.
We have ways of doing that in English. We really do have ways of doing that in English. We kind of have ways of doing that in English. We sort of have ways of doing that, even in English. We have ways of doing that in English, y'know. We even have ways of doing that in English. We have ways of doing just that in English.
You don't translate the words directly; but it's hard to say even what sense should be given to the particle absent context. I used to just skip those words when translating and throw them in later once I had a better sense of the dialogue.
Posted by Cala | Link to this comment | 07-28-06 8:12 AM
klar kennst du mich! und auch wenn ich deinen online Name nicht kennte, hätte deine Wortwahl (stueckerl!) dich verraten.
Wladimir Kaminer wrote Russendisko. I second the recommendation.
Posted by Blume | Link to this comment | 07-28-06 8:14 AM
I stand by my translation of 'doch' as 'yuh-huh'.
Posted by Blume | Link to this comment | 07-28-06 8:18 AM
okay, that is a nice sentence.
i just get a visceral reaction to benn. it's partly ethicopolitical.
i mean, if you want an expressionist poet, why not just go read georg trakl?
(is true, i don't know so many german writers who write prose poems. which maybe you're after. if you come up with any, let me know?)
Posted by mmf! | Link to this comment | 07-28-06 8:19 AM
I'm not after anything in particular, but I had received a recommendation—from someone whose opinions I respect—as to the quality of Benn's writing and this cycle in particular. Actually he (recommender) said that one of Benn's novels was one of the best he'd ever read. I also like this bit from the beginning of "Gehirne": "Ich will mir ein Buch kaufen und einen Stift; ich will mir jetzt möglichst vieles aufschrieben, damit nicht alles so herunterfließt. So viele Jahre lebte ich, und alles ist versunken."—in fact that last sentence was under consideration for appropriation to serve as a post title.
Posted by ben wolfson | Link to this comment | 07-28-06 8:27 AM
90 to 86.
89, doch ist doch total normal. und sehr nuetzlich, wie du sagst.
89: yay!
Posted by mmf! | Link to this comment | 07-28-06 8:29 AM
91: oh, benn is very canonical, there is nothing wrong with liking or reading him. like i said, mine is a visceral subjective reaction, not a universal one. viel Spass noch.
Posted by mmf! | Link to this comment | 07-28-06 8:38 AM
Kaminer rocks. And his books are short and he writes the kind of sentences that non-native speakers get along with. I mean Rilke's Die Aufzeichnungen des Malte Laurids Brigge is amazing style but daunting reading for those of us who didn't get any umlauts at birth.
Sorry to be missing you in Berlin, BW, give me a holla if you're in Munich.
Posted by Doug | Link to this comment | 07-28-06 3:56 PM
I took two years of German in college but all this grammar talk is totally over my head. But about the Cremaster films, I loved part 3, the one that was set in the Chrysler building (even though it was butt-numbingly long) especially for the destruction-derby-to-the-death scene set in the lobby. The battle of the bands in the Guggenheim with Agnostic Front and Murphy's Law was absolutely breathtakingly mind-bogglingly weird-slash-sexy. And another one (part 2?) had lots of cowboy imagery that was so beautiful and pushed my homorerotic buttons so hard that it made me cry.
Posted by John T | Link to this comment | 07-29-06 1:04 PM
I took two years of German in college but all this grammar talk is totally over my head. But about the Cremaster films, I loved part 3, the one that was set in the Chrysler building (even though it was butt-numbingly long) especially for the destruction-derby-to-the-death scene set in the lobby. The battle of the bands in the Guggenheim with Agnostic Front and Murphy's Law was absolutely breathtakingly mind-bogglingly weird-slash-sexy. And another one (part 2?) had lots of cowboy imagery that was so beautiful and pushed my homorerotic buttons so hard that it made me cry.
Posted by John T | Link to this comment | 07-29-06 1:04 PM